614: Shawn Achor | Leveraging the Happiness Advantage

614: Shawn Achor | Leveraging the Happiness Advantage

[00:00:00] Jordan Harbinger: Coming up next on The Jordan Harbinger Show. 

[00:00:02] Shawn Achor: Doing each of these habits, what we find is your brain actually starts to create a new pattern for how you look at the world. Instead of looking at the world and saying, "Here are all the mistakes I see. Here are all the fires we need to put out first." If you do that, your brain never sees the positive, but if you start with the positives, scanning for it, it turns out not only did you see that, but you have the energy and the intelligence to then start solving the problems that you see within that environment as well.

[00:00:29] Jordan Harbinger: Welcome to the show. I'm Jordan Harbinger. On The Jordan Harbinger Show, we decode the stories, secrets, and skills of the world's most fascinating people. We have in-depth conversations with people at the top of their game, astronauts, entrepreneurs, spies, and psychologists, even the occasional former Jihadi, national security advisor, or a music mogul. Each episode turns our guests' wisdom into practical advice that you can use to build a deeper understanding of how the world works and become a better person. 

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[00:01:12] Today, we're talking with Shawn Achor, when we recorded five, six years ago, on happiness. This was really popular when it first aired. We decided to remaster it, re-edit it for you here this week, giving me more time to change diapers on our two-week-old daughter who was born over the break. He's a New York Times bestselling author of both The Happiness Advantage and Before Happiness. So he's a happiness researcher at Harvard. He now consults at the NFL, NBA, DOD, lots of other three-letter places. And he's got a documentary on PBS and HBO. He's a big fan of the TLAs it would seem, three-letter acronyms that is. He's a positive psychology superstar, but not in that sort of toxic positive way, if you know what I mean. 

[00:01:50] On this episode, why scientifically happiness is a choice as well as some happiness habits we can foster for ourselves, also which comes first happiness or success. Shawn has studied happiness and will show us how being happy could be an advantage, even a competitive advantage in a marketplace. We'll also discuss how happiness helps with our personal and professional relationships and how we can cultivate this for ourselves. Of course, there's a whole lot more here as well. And this episode is very, very practical. Lots you can apply here for yourself right after you listen here in this one with Shawn Achor. 

[00:02:21] And if you're wondering how I managed to book all these amazing folks for the show, it's because of my network and I'm teaching you how to build your network for free over at jordanharbinger.com/course. The course is about improving your networking and connection skills and inspiring others to develop a personal and professional relationship with you. It'll make you a better networker, a better connector, and a better thinker. That's jordanharbinger.com/course. And by the way, most of the guests on our show already subscribe and contribute to the course. So come join us, you'll be in smart company where you belong. 

[00:02:51] Now, here's Shawn Achor. 

[00:02:56] So your show came out last night. How did it land? 

[00:02:58] Shawn Achor: It went amazing. I was in Mexico when it came out. I was getting all these reports from Twitter and Facebook, from people that are loving it. People, writing in, there are psychologists, there are coaches and teachers who are saying, we need to put this positive psychology into practice when we're getting kids to play soccer and football. But also people writing in that had served in the military, you know, serve 20 years in the military, and they were saying it was about time that some of this happiness research was getting into these places. It was really exciting, exhilarating. 

[00:03:29] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. That makes sense. I mean, when I think happy, I think military, right? So maybe they need to, maybe they do need a little bit of that. I think everybody gets it though. What prompted you, why did you go on vacation when your show is going to debut? It was just timing worked out. Or were you just like, "I don't need to be dealing with this anymore. It's out of my hands. Let's go sit on a beach"?

[00:03:46] Shawn Achor: Well, we had an opportunity to do a global event where we had people come to do something called a vacation altruist, so it was half vacation, half positive psychology retreat, where they were learning about how to become happier on vacation. So not just drinking piña coladas and tequila sitting on the beach, it was actually, while they were there in Mexico, they were learning about all this research that could help them grow their companies, that could help them become happier, that could help them raise happier kids. We had to do it because it was such a great opportunity. 

[00:04:19] Jordan Harbinger: That's awesome. And if there's, you know, honestly my contribution to your happiness research, piña coladas and tequila does the trick in moderation. 

[00:04:27] Shawn Achor: In moderation. Well, it's all inclusive, so that makes it challenging. 

[00:04:31] Jordan Harbinger: That's very, very happy. Yeah, exactly. Excellent. 

[00:04:33] So let's talk about who you are and why people should listen to you for that matter. I mean, you're a best-selling author of a book called The Happiness Advantage and Before Happiness. You worked at Harvard, which of course always carries a little sway, but most recently your TV show has just launched on PBS, which is awesome.

[00:04:50] Shawn Achor: We have had both PBS and HBO. So I did a lecture series on PBS, which basically the course that was being taught at Harvard initially by Dr. Tal-Ben Shahar, which became the most popular class at Harvard. We decided we needed to get this research out beyond the ivory tower so that people outside of Harvard could have access to this research. He's doing his research on different parts of the world. I've been focusing a lot on how we can bring this happiness research into companies. I started this in the middle of the banking crisis, but have also been working with the military and with the NBA and the NFL. 

[00:05:26] And so we had a PBS lecture series that came out. It was a one-hour lecture where we were trying to get this research that the students at Harvard were hearing about how they could find happiness and success at the same time and provide that to millions. So it was really exciting. And then of course, the HBO, State of Play, which was taking this happiness research into the military, into the NFL, which to me is really exciting.

[00:05:48] Earlier this year, I was out speaking at the Pentagon. It was a room full of senior warfare, specialty officers, people who had led NATO forces in Afghanistan and Iraq who had seen combat and very difficult things. And I gave a one-hour talk on happiness research. And they even confiscated my phone and put it into a sealed vault. That's how much security there was, in case I tried anything during a happiness talk, but afterwards one of the senior leaders came up to me and said, "10 years ago, we could not have had a talk at the Pentagon on happiness." And what I loved about that is that the conversation's changing. 

[00:06:22] I think happiness has gone from a soft word to something that people realize could not only bend the tracks of human potential to cause us to be more intelligent and creative and do better at sports, but that also was an incredible advantage when it came. People started looking at business outcomes. In fact, my research basically shows that the greatest competitive advantage in the modern economy is a positive engaged brain, which is why I think that this research is so important and has so much of the work that you've been doing to get people to see that their behavior matters is crucial. 

[00:06:53] Jordan Harbinger: Excellent. So tell me why the NFL, NBA, DOD, and lots of other three-letter acronym places care about happiness. I mean, it's amazing you got on their radar. You even did a TED Talk and I'm starting to get a feeling that every acronym in the show is going to be three letters here. But you even did a TED Talk about happiness, super popular. I get why people think about happiness, why people talk about happiness. But I think where we might be crossing into uncharted territory that I love by the way is when companies and big multi-million billion dollar industries are saying, "We need happiness now," you know, especially the Pentagon. Talk about unhappy places, right?

[00:07:31] Shawn Achor: It's been fascinating watching this because we were not sure how this happiness research would take off. A lot of people have been talking about happiness for a long time. I think what has changed in the conversation is we're actually able to test it now. We're using different metrics, using a test of your neurochemicals, your biochemicals in your body, looking at your biometrics, heart rate variability, and the sweat that even as at the tips of your fingertips. We actually can use all of that to be able to triangulate and find out pretty accurately, not only people's levels of optimism and social connection, but a general sense of happiness.

[00:08:08] And I think that what's crucial is not only the fact that we can test this, but I think that we have to redefine what happiness is, the pursuit of happiness. And this is why it's been so important to these companies. The way that I define happiness in this research, it's not mere pleasure because pleasure, you can get, of course, you know, opening up the right soda can or eating a dessert but it's short-lived. What we're really looking for is long-term and quantifiable positive changes to people's lives. The way that we define happiness in this research is the joy that you feel growing towards your potential and I've loved that definition. 

[00:08:41] For me, it changed the way that I pursued happiness, because joy is something you can experience even in the ups and downs of life, even in the ups and downs of a market cycle, even when things are not pleasurable. Like if you're going for a long run or you're working really hard on a project. And the other part of it that I love is that oftentimes we want happiness in the present and then we're kind of done, and then happiness just slips through our fingers. The reason that happens is that joy has to be linked to growth, that growth towards our potential as athletes, as musicians, as parents, as teachers, as altruists, whatever it is that your potential is, even your potential on your relationships, both romantic and your family relationships, and just with your friends. 

[00:09:21] As you pursue that, that's where we're able to not only get people to experience joy, but actually sustain it and why the companies get so excited is that as we've been doing this research, I've now worked with over a third of the Fortune 100 companies and I've worked in 51 different countries and started this in the middle of the banking crisis. So I was working with large banks with UBS, American Express, Credit Suisse, as they were going through this period where they couldn't pay people like they were wanting to. Like they couldn't give bonuses. The market is collapsing. They weren't sure what they were going to do. In the midst of that, we could go in and show them that there's research specifically on this, about how you can get people to not only believe that their behavior matters, but actually find joy in the midst of the process of rebuilding.

[00:10:05] And what we found is when people have that type of happiness, we find that their sales rise by 37 percent. Their productivity rises by 31 percent. We found that they're 40 percent more likely to receive a promotion over the next two-year period of time. They live longer. They have three times creativity and their intelligence rises. So what's amazing about this, and I think the companies and the military and schools are starting to get, is that happiness is actually an incredible competitive advantage. 

[00:10:32] Jordan Harbinger: That's pretty cool. I know from being in my role here, if I'm not happy or if I'm having a rough day or something like that, I'll often, if I can't recover and rally off and cancel or reschedule the shows because I can't perform optimally on this, if I'm unhappy or really stressed out or can't focus. And I think that has to be true for people in sales, customer service, teaching, pretty much any role. I didn't realize your productivity went up, but it makes total sense. If you're not lollygagging and distracted and you can focus better, well, of course, your productivity is going to go up. 

[00:11:06] Shawn Achor: You're absolutely right. It's so important because not only do people not perform at their highest levels, but they might go do something else and you might lose that great talent. And these companies, not just the Googles and the Zappos of the world, but you know, we're working with extremely large insurance companies. We've been working with nationwide insurance to train their salesforce. When they're onboarded, they're learning that happiness leads to greater sales, not the other way around. We're doing some really large things that are exactly what you're seeing happen on your team, and it's exciting. 

[00:11:33] One of the research studies that I found was incredible. That shows the business applicability of happiness is at MetLife, they found that the top 10 percent of optimists amongst our insurance salesforce were outselling the other 90 percent of the salespeople by another 89 percent. So they did a multi-million dollar gamble and they hired people that were low on industry standard tests. Like what they would normally test you on when they hire or educate somebody but high on optimism. And by year one, they outsold the pessimist by 19 percent, and by year two, by 57 percent. 

[00:12:06] So what we're finding is that this optimism, if you can get it on your team, not only helps with sales, but it helps people want to stay there. It improves their immune systems. They take fewer sick days. They live longer, all these different types of benefits.

[00:12:19] Jordan Harbinger: Wow. That's great. So they basically took people that weren't necessarily good salesmen biomechanics chose them for attitude and then trained them in the sales tactics. And of course, it took them a year learning curve, but even in their learning curve, they outperformed the rest. 

[00:12:33] Shawn Achor: Even in the learning curve, and that's why it's so exciting. That's why I think that there's so much connection between what you're doing in positive psychology, because part of what we're teaching people is your behavior matters. And when people see that there are very clear, practical steps that they can take in their life to improve their happiness or improve their ability to connect to other people, what we find is, when we do the research, we actually find that it has not just a small impact upon people's lives, but when people start to make these and apply these positive changes in their life, we can take people that were originally not good salespeople, and we can get them to outperform the other salespeople by another 57 percent. Within a two-year period of time, we can raise their productivity. We can get Navy SEAL, low performers to act like Navy SEAL high performers on the squad teams. The effects really go into every domain of our life. 

[00:13:18] Jordan Harbinger: That is pretty incredible. I mean, just the military stuff is fascinating. So obviously the fact that you've been able to do this and do this well, what's the science here? I mean, is happiness a choice? Can you say scientifically happiness is a choice or trainable, learnable? 

[00:13:35] Shawn Achor: That's why I'm so excited for people to listen to this podcast, because what we teach in schools is that you are just your genes and just your environment. When I talk to people, they're like, "I can't be happy because, you know, I was just born a pessimist," or, "I can't be happy because this is my external world or my neurochemicals prevent me from feeling happy." And it's not just happiness. We're told that about intelligence, about creativity, about our ability to connect to other people, about charisma. 

[00:14:00] And it turns out, as we've been doing this research, I believe we're living through twin revolutions. A technological revolution that everyone knows about, but that technological one has allowed us to peer behind the curtain, as we're looking at what the human brain is doing as you're experiencing the world. And what we realized was that there was a third path. That as we researched people, most people end up just like their genes and their environment, that's the average person. But if you look at those same graphs, we find that people can deviate dramatically from their genes and their environment. They can actually trump both.

[00:14:31] Let me put that another way. What we found is we can get people to do very short habits, like a two-minute positive habit for 21 days. And within that period of 21 days, not only can we trump their genes, but we can do this with 84-year-old men and trump eight decades of experience, getting people who are previously not positive people to actually be low-level optimist. And we've been finding this in almost every domain of our lives. 

[00:14:54] So part of what we're doing is we're actually showing that scientifically happiness can be a choice. And once you make that choice, it proves to be a great advantage in terms of our relationships, because positive people are perceived as being more attractive by the opposite sex. They're perceived as being more trustworthy in social situations and within sales. We find that they're more likely to receive promotions. We find that they're actually more likely to live longer. It turns out that as people make that choice, the effect spreads not only to them, but to the people around them, causing them to be happy as well.

[00:15:27] Jordan Harbinger: Wow. So it's contagious. That's pretty cool too. I did not know that. I mean, you hear about that. 

[00:15:33] Shawn Achor: Let me tell you one really cool thing. They're called mirror neurons. We just discovered them in the human brain a little while ago, but basically if you see somebody yawn and then other people in the room start yawning. There's a biological reason for that. There are certain parts of your brain that activate when you see people around you yawn or smile. And as a result of that, they light up, they show activation in your brain telling you that you're the one that's yawning. You're the one that's smiling. And you can pick up the fatigue of somebody sitting across the room. You can actually pick up the smile of somebody that's talking to you.

[00:16:02] Where this gets interesting is, we found if you have 15 strangers waiting for a plane and they don't even know they're part of an experiment and you have an undercover researcher come near them and just act anxious. They tap their foot on the floor. They move side to side. They look at their watch repeatedly with a frown on their face. And within just two minutes, we found that seven to 12 of the 15 individuals were unconsciously started moving nervously in place or tapping their foot on the ground and/or looking at their watch more than four times in two minutes. 

[00:16:31] Which shows the reason for that experiment and why I'm telling you about these mirror neurons is because there's a biological reason for the emotional contagion. That you can be an incredibly optimistic person, but you can pick up the negativity of people around you, like secondhand smoke. Because it's not just smiles and yawns that spread, but it turns out if you're surrounded by people that are focused on the negative or anxious or are down all the time, it turns out even if you're an optimist, you'll start to pick that up. 

[00:16:59] Now, when I tell people about that, they immediately start cutting negative people out of their lives. But I think that this research is so much more powerful for you and for the people listening, because what this research shows is that when we choose to become more positive, when we create a positive habit in our lives and buffer ourselves against the negative, we can actually wirelessly change the brains of people around us, causing them to become more positive and actually trumping that negative effect. So the real question is can we get ourselves to become positive enough so that we can actually overcome the negative influences that are around us. 

[00:17:30] Jordan Harbinger: You know, that's something, we discuss a lot on the show, not the wireless reprogramming of other people, which sounds sort of nefarious and so good at the same time, but the getting rid of negative folks around you and it can be really tough because some people write in and they go, "Yeah, I know you say you only go as high as your five closest friends and I know you know say we should eliminate negative influences in our lives as much as we can, but what if it's my mom?" And then that's where it gets dicey and stuff like that, right? So this is great because now you're looking at not only do you have to, or should be moving these negative influences away, but we don't have to be like, "Oh, you're negative. I'm never talking to you again." 

[00:18:04] Shawn Achor: You're absolutely really right. Instead of having to eliminate negative people from our lives, we can actually become stronger than them by creating some of these positive changes, creating these positive habits with our lives. So we've been studying a positive psychology. We can actually trump their negative effect. 

[00:18:16] The key, I think though, is once people hear about positive research, they go guns blazing at the most negative person that they know, trying to change that person. 

[00:18:23] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. 

[00:18:24] Shawn Achor: And I think a much better strategy based upon this research is to go for the low hanging fruit, go for those people in our lives that are neutral, or it could be tipped in one direction or the other. And once we've actually moved them to become more positive, we've increased the number of people being positive around that negative person. In social influence and social psychology, which you probably know. Three things, it's the strength of the message, it's how immediate the message is, and the number of sources. If you can increase the number of positive sources around that negative person, you've actually dramatically increased your social influence over them, allowing them to start to make some of these positive changes.

[00:19:00] Jordan Harbinger: You're listening to The Jordan Harbinger Show with our guest Shawn Achor. We'll be right back. 

[00:19:05] This episode is sponsored in part by My First Million podcast. My First Million is a top 25 business podcast on Apple Podcasts. And every week, Sam Parrand Shaan Puri brainstorm business ideas you can start tomorrow. Not only do they bring ideas, but they also break down how to actually pull off the business, which I like. They can be side hustles that'll make you a few grand a month or big billion dollar ideas, or pretty much anything in between. They discuss things like how a teenager can take their side hustle to the next level and the best and worst ways to make money in your 20s. And I like the way these guys talk. It's like you're playing poker, hanging out with buddies, getting good business advice, hearing successful funny guys tell you unique stories. And I know these guys in person, they are the real deal. It's not like two schmoes trying to grift on the side as many of these sort of business shows tend to be. So check it out and hey, maybe it'll help you make your first million users, revenue, profit employees, whatever it is you want a million of. Search for My First Million on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. 

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[00:21:19] And now back to Shawn Achor. 

[00:21:22] We might say like out-framing their negativity, right? You just come in, especially if they're not firmly entrenched, like you don't want to go with somebody who's been negative their whole life. That's our whole identity, but maybe just people who are maybe normally kind of, like you said, neutral, maybe they're having a little bit of a bad day or a bad year, you can come in and really turn things around. And of course, that would seem to have a multiplier effect within a social circle or an office space, for example, right? Because if you come in and your coworkers around you are like, "Oh," you know, this attitude shift is happening sort of near you as the locust. And then around them, even the most diehard negatives in the office, if everybody else is positive and having fun, either, they're going to reject it outright and maybe quit, and then you don't have to deal with them or they're going to go, "All right," you know subconsciously, "I give up, I'm going to play the game. I'm the only grinch and grump in the whole place. It's not fun anymore." 

[00:22:15] Shawn Achor: Yeah, exactly how it works. Right. Because what you're doing by making these positive changes is you're changing the social script, right? So we know on certain subways, sometimes in New York and in Boston, where I spent 12 years, you go on the subway there, you learn the social script, I'm not supposed to necessarily look at other people, right? Or certainly not smile at them. 

[00:22:33] But one of the studies we did at a group of hospitals down in Louisiana post Hurricane Katrina, is we just trained the hospital employees to do what they do at the Ritz Carlton, which is we trained them as they walked down the hallway. If they walk within 10 feet of somebody, they make eye contact and smile. And within five feet, they'd say, hello. It's called the 10/5 way. Very simple to train, it takes one second to do, but what they found is it was worth tens of millions of dollars to the hospital because it significantly increased the number of unique patient visits. The patients were more likely to refer to the care based upon the quality of care that they receive. And the doctors were actually significantly happier while they were there. 

[00:23:07] So what we found is, even these small little changes — there's a study that was done at Yale. They found if you have three strangers come into a room, that all with different emotions, the other two people will leave with an increased likelihood of experiencing the emotions of the most verbally or nonverbally expressive person. That's kind of a convoluted way of saying that—

[00:23:26] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, can you clarify that? 

[00:23:27] Shawn Achor: Yeah, it's not positive or negative people that win. It's who's most verbally and non-verbally expressive of it. So one of the things I do at these organizations during my talks is I'll have a survey beforehand and we found that 31 percent of individuals are optimistic, but are not very expressive of it at work. And I think that there's either two reasons for that, either they feel like their optimism is not going to be seen in the right light, or they think that other people around them are more pessimistic or maybe they feel introverted in those cases, right? 

[00:23:56] But that means that a third of the people that, that optimist is talking to, there's a third of a chance — I mean, 30 percent chance that the person they're talking to that doesn't seem very positive is actually an optimist but is not being expressive of it right now. The more people that choose to be verbally and non-verbally expressive of their optimism at work, it changes the social script, allowing, unlocking those 31 percent to actually feel like they can be more optimistic. And that they don't have to keep going along with the grumbling or the complaining.

[00:24:27] Jordan Harbinger: That's great because it gives them social permission to change their attitude, kind of like what we said before. 

[00:24:33] Shawn Achor: That's it. 

[00:24:33] Jordan Harbinger: Excellent. Wow. So I want to jump back to something you'd mentioned earlier as well, where you'd sort of hinted at this, that happiness begets success, not the other way around. You'd mentioned it, I think in a sales context. And I totally understand that, but I want to clarify that. So which comes first happiness or success? Because I know from my wall street days, everybody talked about success coming first, but I also know that that was the most back ass words place that I've ever been in my life. And I never want to go back. 

[00:25:01] Shawn Achor: Yeah, we've done a lot of work with Wall Street. That's actually where I started doing all this research because a lot of this research in psychology, it's usually done with college freshmen where you're grading them and you know, they're in a psychology class. But to test these things out in the messiness of life, even in the stresses of Wall Street, we started finding some pretty unique things about how people were trying to strive for happiness and success.

[00:25:23] So I spent 12 years at Harvard and during that period of time, for eight of those years, I was counseling the students as they went through their time there, trying to help them to be as successful as possible while they were there. And one of the things I noticed is they kept thinking, "If I get into Harvard, once I have that success, then I'll be happier." And then after I left Harvard, I've been working with celebrities and professional athletes and musicians, and they thought, "Well, as soon as I get to this place, or as soon as I get $10 million or $100 million net worth, then I'll feel happier." And as we were researching it, we found exactly the opposite.

[00:25:55] This is actually the heart of all of my work in positive psychology. We found that most people think, "If I work harder, I'll be more successful. And as soon as I achieve these goals in my life or over the next year, then I'll feel happier." And think how often we do that? 

[00:26:09] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. 

[00:26:09] Shawn Achor: So, "As soon as this project is over, then I'll feel happier." Or like, "As soon as I get that car, I'll feel happier." "As soon as I get into the right school or get this job or get the promotion, then I'll feel happier." But the problem is every time somebody has success, the brain changes what success looks like. 

[00:26:23] Jordan Harbinger: Yes. 

[00:26:23] Shawn Achor: Almost immediately. 

[00:26:24] Jordan Harbinger: Exactly. 

[00:26:25] Shawn Achor: So you win the state championship in high school. Well, now you have to win in college, right? Then you got to go pro and I've talked to NFL players who have won the Super Bowl and the next day, they're defending it, right? So it wasn't like it created happiness for the rest of their life. And the average NFL career is only three years. So this was in the HBO State of Play program which is if you were hoping that happiness would happen to you at a certain successful level, it doesn't work. 

[00:26:50] We were talking about this earlier, but earlier this year, I got the opportunity to go out to Oprah's house and do a two-hour interview with her on happiness and positive psychology research. And she told me that at the height of her career, she was the most depressed, which is incredible because she has all this money and opportunity and she was producing movies, but she didn't necessarily feel it. And the reason for that is that every time your brain has success, your brain changes the goalpost of what success looks like. So if happiness for you is on the opposite side of some success in the future, monetary or work-wise, you'll never reach that. 

[00:27:21] Jordan Harbinger: Right. 

[00:27:22] Shawn Achor: And that's exactly true in what you're seeing on Wall Street. But flip it around, what we found is if we can find ways of deepening your social connection, raising your optimism, and getting your brain to positive by creating a happier brain, it turns out every single success rate rises dramatically. Your productivity improves. Your likelihood of promotion improves. Your likelihood of living longer improves. So basically, to put in a short form, we found that if you raise your success rates for the rest of your life, your happiness levels flatline. Flip it around. If you raise your levels of happiness now in the midst of the challenge, as you're trying to develop those relationships or to get that job, it turns out your success rates rise dramatically.

[00:28:02] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. This makes a lot of sense. And this is why a lot of times these Olympic athletes, they get the gold medal and then it's like, "Cool." And then three weeks later, nobody cares about you or maybe three months later. And you're just like, "Wait, I dedicated my whole life to that. And that's it. That was supposed to fix everything. Now, I'm just a dude who has cool stuff on his mantle at my parents' house." Of course, happiness begets success, and not the other way around. Like I said, on Wall Street, a lot of those guys are super wealthy, making millions of dollars a year. They hated their lives. Their families were done with them. You know, they were divorced and miserable. They didn't see their kids. I can only imagine what Oprah's goalposts were at the height of her career when she wasn't happy. I mean, she was, "I'm going to do my show in outer space." I mean, you can only go so high, right? But you have to have that happiness beforehand. Otherwise, no matter what, you're not going to view yourself as very successful. That's awful. But the good news is that we can reprogram that in ourselves and others. 

[00:28:56] Shawn Achor: And in addition to that, for those guys that are hoping to get a girlfriend or when people are trying to get a job or break into the movie industry or the TV industry, for example, we found that if they choose happiness now, the likelihood of actually finding a girlfriend rises, the likelihood of getting a partner. So it wasn't just about happiness for happiness's sake. It turns out that happiness made them more successful as they were attempting to date or get jobs or to pursue that success. 

[00:29:22] Jordan Harbinger: So we've sold happiness pretty good, I think. Are there hacks that we can make to create these changes? And by hacks, I mean, habits, whether or not that takes a ton of work or something simple. I want to learn how to rewire these neural pathways in your brain, because you're talking about trumping your genes, or at least what we perceive as our genes and creating effects that lasts for, theoretically, a lifetime and that help in work, our relationships, with our financial life. I mean, this is hugely important. And where do we begin with the action in this process? 

[00:29:55] Shawn Achor: Well, that's what I've been looking for. So over the past 12 years, I've been looking for the smallest possible habit you can make within your life. It would have the biggest impact upon not only your happiness, but upon all of these business or educational or health outcomes. If you think about it, we've really only created one global habit and that's getting people to brush their teeth. We already eat naturally. We sleep naturally. We got people to brush your teeth and then done. There's nothing else. We actually got everyone to be able to do. And if you ask Dennis, we got the wrong one. We should've been flossing instead of brushing our teeth, but I'm glad we're keeping that one. 

[00:30:27] But what I've been looking for is what if we added one extra, two-minute habit, akin to brushing. It would not only improve your health, but actually raise people's levels of happiness and cause them to be more successful. We found five of those happiness hacks so far that take less than two minutes a day that have done for 21 days in a row can trump your genes and can actually trump up to eight decades of experience. And they're very simple and you only have to do one of these. You don't have to do all five of these. 

[00:30:53] But the first one, we tested at American Express, we had people think of three new things that they're grateful for over the past 24 hours and write them down or say them. The key to this was that they had to be new each day. People, they were just saying things that they're grateful for. It didn't work because it kept saying the same things over and over again, their health, their family, their job, and then they were done. They had to think each day about something new that caused them to be grateful. 

[00:31:16] And what happened is as your brain is scanning for the positive, your brain actually gets better at it. Those neural pathways get stronger and your brain actually gets better over the entire course of the day of seeing the positives that were already latent within that environment. We can take people that are low level pessimists, have them do this for 21 days in a row by day 22, their testing is low level optimist and that's amongst 84-year-old men. And you can do this with four-year-old children all the way up to 84-year-old. That's the first one, three new things you're grateful for each day because it actually trains your brain to get better at looking for the positive. 

[00:31:50] The second one is something called the doubler. I went through two years of depression when I was at Harvard and this is the one that pulled me out of it. What we have people do is think of one positive experience you've had over the past 24 hours. One positive experience and then into a blank word document, into an app, into a Moleskine, whatever you want to do, you just bullet point every detail you can remember about that one experience. So you're not journaling about your whole day. You're just writing about the one experience, what you were wearing, what you're thinking about, what you're saying. 

[00:32:19] The reason for that is your brain can't tell the difference between visualization and actual experience. So if you journal about a positive experience, your brain doubles it for you. Do it for 21 days, your brain actually realizes it. It connects the dots for you. And you realize this, you have this trajectory of meaning running throughout your life. It's the fastest intervention we found for raising the level of meaning people feel within their life. 

[00:32:40] Jordan, this is incredible. I did a study with the National MS Society. We did a program called Everyday Matters with people with a chronic neuromuscular disease, with MS. And we asked them, "Do you really think happiness is a choice?" What we found previously in this research is that if you journal about positive experience for six weeks in a row with a chronic neuromuscular disease, six months later, they were able to drop your pain medication by 50 percent. These sound like small little tips or tricks, but these hacks really transform how the brain and the body work.

[00:33:12] And the last three are very quick and simple. 15 minutes of fun, cardio activity. A half workout a day is the equivalent of taking an antidepressant for the first six months, but for the next two years, you have a 30 percent lower relapse rate. And the reason for that is not the endorphins that are released. That's short-term happiness. The reason is that exercise is a starter drug. When people exercise, they believe that their behavior matters and it cascades to their next activity. And the next one, people who exercise in the morning are better at dealing with their inbox at two o'clock in the middle of the day. 

[00:33:43] The fourth one is meditation. I've been doing this one out of Google. I've been working with leaders like Ming Tan and some of the individuals and the people in operations at Google, where we have individuals to take their hands off of their keyboard for two minutes a day, go from multitasking to single tasking, just watching their breath go in and out for only two minutes and then go right back to work. Accuracy rates rise by 10 percent. Happiness levels go up. And the stress levels of people around you who are not practicing this attention training, their stress levels drop too, which is incredible. 

[00:34:12] And the final one is the most powerful of the five. This is what I've been doing out Facebook and at Lululemon and at Nationwide Insurance. We've had them, every morning when they first opened their inbox, they write a two-minute email praising or thanking one person that they know and a different person for 21 days in a row. So before reading any emails, you write a two-minute positive email. I wrote to a high school English teacher one day. I just said, "You're the reason I fell in love with reading. You're the reason I wrote a book. Thank you for changing my life." It took 45 seconds to type. It took me longer to find out what woman's email address online. 

[00:34:42] Jordan Harbinger: Sure. 

[00:34:43] Shawn Achor: If you do this for three days in a row, your brain literally gets addicted to it. Because you're going to spend all day long thinking about how amazing you were for writing that email in the morning. But if you do this for 21 days in a row, your social connection, when we ask you about your social connection, is actually incredibly deep and robust. You have 21 people. You've meaningfully and positively activated within their lives. Social connection is not only the greatest predictor of happiness, but we just discovered the social connection is as predictive of how long you will end up living as obesity, high blood pressure, and smoking. We fight so hard against the negative and we forget to tell people how powerful a two-minute happiness hack could actually be. 

[00:35:24] Jordan Harbinger: This is The Jordan Harbinger Show with our guest Shawn Achor. We'll be right back. 

[00:35:29] This episode is sponsored in part by QuickVue. After returning from the Amazon Jungle for the peace of mind of my pregnant wife and family, I made sure to get tested for COVID-19. Did you know that with QuickVue at-home OTC COVID-19 tests, you can get rapid results in just 10 minutes in the privacy of your own home. You can pick one up over the counter at your local retailer or online. And testing is really easy. Instructions are clear and simple. Essentially, you swab each nostril, put the swab in a tube of solution, put the test strip in the solution, and then wait and check for the results. Whether you're feeling under the weather, seeing a loved one, returning from a trip, or you just want to check your COVID-19 status, it's always a good idea to test with QuickVue at-home OTC COVID-19. Take 10 minutes. Take charge. Visit quickvue@home.com for FDA emergency use authorization only. Pick up a QuickVue at-home OTC COVID-19 tests at your local retailer.

[00:36:16] This episode is also sponsored by Progressive. Progressive helps you get a great rate on car insurance. Even if it's not with them, they have a comparison tool that puts the rates side by side. You choose a rate and coverage that works for you. So let's say you're interested in lowering your rate on your car insurance, visit progressive.com. Get a quote with all the coverage you want. You'll see Progressive's rate and their tool will provide rates from other companies, all lined up and easy to compare. All you have to do is choose the rate and coverage you like. Progressive gives you options so you can make the best choice for you could be looking forward to saving money in the very near future. More money for a personal trainer, a VR headset, maybe a hot tub. I'm going to get one of those today, probably an inflatable one. We'll see. Whatever brings you joy. Get a quote today at progressive.com. It's just one small step you can do today that could make a big impact on your budget tomorrow. 

[00:37:02] Jen Harbinger: Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates. Comparison rates not available in all states or situations. Prices vary based on how you buy.

[00:37:09] Jordan Harbinger: By the way you can now rate the show if you're listening on Spotify. This is a huge help. It makes the show more visible on Spotify as well. Just go to jordanharbinger.com/spotify or search for us in your Spotify app. Click those dots on the right to make it happen. 

[00:37:23] Now for the rest of my conversation with Shawn Achor. 

[00:37:27] I've definitely made reminders in my calendar to send these little emails, little texts, et cetera. Watching your breath go in and out, meditation stuff, it's kind of funny because I think a lot of people don't really know what that means to watch your breath go in and out. It's there thinking, "Wow, it must be really cold at Google and watching your breasts go in and out." But I did not know that about cardio. I mean, everyone knows, "Oh, exercise makes you feel good. I didn't know it was as little as 15 minutes and I didn't know the effect was as potent as taking an antidepressant, which explains my morning bike ride. Which you know, is a lot cheaper than a Xanax or whatever, whatever people are taking in the morning. This is great. And just the gratitude exercise of scanning your day for three new things that you're grateful for. Do you do that in the morning then? And then write them down and then just go on with your day or do you do it at the end of the day after you've had something to write down. 

[00:38:16] Shawn Achor: The original research was right before you went to sleep at night because they think that if you do this right before you go to sleep, as your brain is ordering your memories from the day, it's actually doing it in a positive way. For me, I use this as, almost as a preempt during the day. Like if I'm starting to feel negative or tired during the day that this is when I use it. So I use it like a Red Bull, like it not only causes my brain to start activating again, but it actually quiets the part of my brain that's negative or frustrated at that current moment.

[00:38:43] I do actually four or five of these habits every day. And I use them usually in about, it's not exact, but about an hour and a half apart from one another as energy breaks. Because there's that great research that shows, if you take a break every 90 minutes, your brain and body actually recharged much faster and you could stay in the performance zone for longer. So I just spaced them out over the course of my day. But all of this research, all of these habits were done in isolation. So basically you can just pick one of these happiness hacks. Do it for 21 days and you'll already start to see the effect within two or three days. 

[00:39:14] Jordan Harbinger: Because this is a set of habits and requires practice like any other skill, right?

[00:39:19] Shawn Achor: Yeah. So happiness is a choice, but it requires effort. But when people put in the effort, the exciting part about this research is it shows your behavior matters. We can actually make these changes. 

[00:39:29] Jordan Harbinger: Wow. I mean, if this is a positive set of habits, are there a lot of negative habits that people might be able to spot that are causing them to be unhappy?

[00:39:37] Shawn Achor: Yeah, absolutely. So a lot of people try and stop a negative habit and they don't put anything else in its place. So your brain doesn't have anything else to fill that time or that energy with. So it just goes right back to that negative habit. If you put in a positive habit, it actually allows your brain to be able to move away from the negative habit towards the positive one. But yeah, you start to see all these negative patterns in your life that you want to start fixing. One of the chapters in The Happiness Advantage is called Tetris effect. And I love this one because we found that if you get people to play Tetris for five hours in a row, they start dreaming about Tetris. They started— 

[00:40:08] Jordan Harbinger: Oh, yeah, I've been there.

[00:40:09] Shawn Achor: Yeah, exactly. 

[00:40:10] Jordan Harbinger: You know what it works with Goldeneye as well, if anybody remembers that game. It works with Halo. It pretty much works with any repetitive game that I've ever played, which is why I don't play video games anymore because there's nothing like having Grand Theft Auto for going through your head for eight straight hours.

[00:40:25] Shawn Achor: That's so funny because in the book, I actually mentioned Grand Theft Auto for me. Yeah, exactly my problem. So it's called the Tetris effect. If you play Tetris for five hours in a row, your brain retains the pattern as you look at the world. Similarly, I was working with tax auditors at KPMG, and we found that they spend eight to 14 hours a day reading through tax forms, looking for mistakes and errors, and their brains get stuck. And that when they become managers, all they could see are the mistakes and errors on their team. And they can't see any of the reasons why that team is doing well or their strengths. And when they come home, they treat their spouses and their kids like tax forms. They see all the problems first. So if there's a negative Tetris effect where the brain could be imprinted with a negative problem, where you scan the world for the mistakes or the errors or the fires you need to put out first. 

[00:41:08] We can equally train the brain to create a positive Tetris effect, which is doing each of these habits. What we find is your brain actually starts to create a new pattern for how you look at the world. Instead of looking at the world and saying, "Here are all the mistakes I see. Here are all the fires that need to be put out first." If you do that, your brain never sees the positive, but if you start with a positive, scanning for it, it turns out not only do you see that, but you have the energy and the intelligence to then start solving the problems that you see within that environment as well. 

[00:41:35] So you're right. That these patterns exist all throughout. People will start to see them everywhere. 

[00:41:40] Jordan Harbinger: Wow. So yeah, I can see that you'd be looking for negative patterns that would not be helpful at all. It sounds like my dad, he was a QA engineer at Ford for a while and it was like, "Oh, all A's and one B-plus, what happened?" 

[00:41:51] Shawn Achor: Exactly. 

[00:41:51] Jordan Harbinger: And you're like, "Hey man, that's not a bad GPA." And then of course, he's like, "No, I'm proud of you. I just want to know what happened." All right, fine. 

[00:42:00] Now, happiness and smiling and things like that, we commonly equate those as attractive. Do you have scientific research to back that up or is that just, is that still anecdotal stuff? 

[00:42:09] Shawn Achor: No, it's actually scientific. We found it in multiple ways. So first of all, as people are responding to what they want in a potential mate. So this is for dating, it actually found that happiness was one of the highest qualities that they were looking for. At first, we were stunned about why that would be. You think it'd be okay, but evolutionarily it doesn't make any sense, right? Like evolutionarily, you want somebody who can stop that saber-toothed tiger that's charging, right? So you want somebody that's big and strong and right. Or you want somebody who can keep the fire going? What would the value of happiness or humor be? Humor is actually one of the other extremely high qualities that people rate. It turns out both of them are signals of what we call cognitive fitness.

[00:42:48] Basically, if your brain is able to not only deal with the negative, but then it can actually go deeper to actually create a positive within an environment. And the body intuitively knows when you're positive, when you feel happier, it turns out your immune system improves, your cells rebuild faster. You've lived longer. So actually, happiness is such an adaptive trait that it turns out that people very much look for that in potential mates. Anyone who can get them to laugh or just smile, because both of those things cause your parasympathetic nervous system to activate, which is the exact part of your body that calms you down. It causes you to perform at higher levels. And instead of running from saber-toothed tigers, you learn how to build entire cities. So you don't even have to worry about that problem. 

[00:43:30] Jordan Harbinger: Oh, wow. That is very cool. I never would've thought of this, of course. And very keen to hear about some of the research when we talk more. 

[00:43:37] Last, but not least, I want to leave people with this because I think it's all fine and good to develop these happiness habits and things like that. But what happens when we encounter stress, because stress is the great derailer. You're doing your gratitude thing and you're watching your breath go in and out and you're like, "This is great." And then you get an email, it's like, "All-hands meeting tomorrow morning, 7:00 a.m. You need to make sure your car is packed and put everything in a box. Some of you are getting sh*tcanned." I mean, who knows what kind of email you're going to get? That's not too far fetched from how things were on Wall Street. 

[00:44:08] Obviously, if you work at Google, you might have a little bit more of a pleasant working environment. But what do we do with stress in order to not let it just ruin us every single day? Because that was something that I struggled with for a long time. And even to the point where I'd see emails in my inbox from certain people who are always bullies or bearers of bad news, and my heart would be like, "Ugh." And I'd be like, oh my god, I'm nervous because I just see these knuckleheads in my inbox. That's no good. So I needed to recondition my brain. I needed to sort of remap that. 

[00:44:38] And I know a lot of people are going to be struggling with this. Even the people that implement everything they're going to be like, "This is so great." And then they're going to run into the brick wall of stress and it's all going to come crashing down.

[00:44:48] Shawn Achor: You're right. It's one of the most important questions. So that's why we spent a good deal of time researching it just recently. In fact, I just had a paper published in the top psychology journal earlier last year, with two researchers, one from Yale and one from Stanford. We were setting exactly this. Here's what we found. We were working with UBS in the middle of the banking crisis. When people were not getting their bonuses, they weren't getting paid. There were massive restructurings. So they didn't know if they would have their jobs. 

[00:45:13] Jordan Harbinger: Right now. I got to interrupt. There's a lot of people out there going boo-hoo the guys that UBS didn't get their bonuses and they got restructured. Nobody feels bad for Wall Street guys, but go on. 

[00:45:26] Shawn Achor: You're right. Like they have less externally to complain about, but what we found is that only 10 percent of our long-term happiness is about the external world. We found that incredibly happy people and unhappy people living in the shanty towns in Soweto, South Africa that I was working with, and the same thing in Wall Street, I found some very negative people, but also some very positive one, same to conditions. And the real question is why, right? Like everyone experiences stress to some extent. So, what we looked at is we found that most people's view of stress caused them to feel sicker. 

[00:45:56] What we were discovering was that if you go through a stress management program, they tell you stress is related to the 10 leading causes of death and disease. The World Health Organization found stress to be the number one killer. It destroys every organ in the body. So they're like, "Whatever you do, don't stress at work," right? But as soon as you hear— 

[00:46:12] Jordan Harbinger: Right. 

[00:46:12] Shawn Achor: —that information, you're like, "Well, I feel a lot more stressed and stop emailing me so much. You're destroying every organ in my body," but all their research is true. But there's equally true research that we never talked about. That shows that stress — I'm not talking about good stress, like youth stress. I'm talking about like high levels of negative stress in the middle of a crisis. We find that your immune system is as high as possible level. Your brain speeds up. Your memory improves. Your social support actually deepens. If you think about it with the work I've been doing with the military, they don't onboard you into the military with a beach vacation. They onboard you with bootcamp. They intentionally put you in a stressful situation, but it creates these meaningful narratives that people talk about for the rest of their lives.

[00:46:53] So what we did was we split up the employees, half of them received this idea that stress is bad. Here's how you can fight and flee from it as hard as you possibly can in your life. And the other side, we saw stress is enhancing. It's key to your potential. Here's how you embrace it and utilize it. I thought the second group might show lower stress, but six weeks later, equally high levels of stress for both groups. But the group that saw stress, not as something that's always bad, but something that could be enhancing, we saw a 23 percent drop in their health-related symptoms. 23 percent drop in all the negative effects, which means that stress is inevitable in our lives, but its effects upon us are not. And it's changed by how we perceive stress with our lives.

[00:47:33] If you are trying to decrease all the stress in your life, so you can be happy, you will lose that game. Right? Because stress has to be there for us to be able to function fully but also stress is enhancing. It causes us to achieve our potential. But if you change your viewpoint to say, "Look this negative guy at work," or, "The stress I'm feeling on this project," or, "The stress I'm feeling for this game, that's coming up," or, "The stress I feel for combat that those are the very things that are actually going to fuel my behavior, causing me to be a better soldier, causing me to be a better salesperson or a better friend in times of need."

[00:48:03] And what we found is, suddenly, the same stress caused people's levels of energy to rise, their health and immune system improved. And it turns out when they came home at the end of the day, they were less tired. So stress, its effects can actually be changed by changing your brain. 

[00:48:18] Jordan Harbinger: Wow. That's awesome. So you can remap what stress does to you.

[00:48:22] Shawn Achor: Exactly. 

[00:48:23] Jordan Harbinger: Oh man, that's very powerful. That causes so many deleterious health effects, so many lifestyle effects. It ruins relationships. It causes you to leave your career. But if you can remap that, you can restructure that, you're literally, it's as close as it comes to like Kung Fu manually changing what's going on in your body.

[00:48:42] Shawn Achor: That's exactly it. And that's what the military is brilliant at. That's their very first thing is put you through as much stress as possible, but that's stress causes people to not only feel more confident when they finished bootcamp, but they actually have created these deep, deep relationships and friendships, which we could be using within our schools and our businesses, if we changed the way that we were looking at stress. Most people see stress as something that's an unfortunate event in modern life, but stress is actually something that causes our bodies to push themselves to their limit in a very positive way. 

[00:49:12] Jordan Harbinger: Absolutely. Awesome. Thank you so much, Shawn. We're going to link to your book and of course, any links that we can find to some of the media and your TED Talk in the show notes as well. And thanks so much for your time. Welcome back from Mexico and congrats on all the success. 

[00:49:26] Shawn Achor: Thank you so much for having me on. 

[00:49:29] Jordan Harbinger: I've got some thoughts on this episode, but before I get into that, here's what you should check out next on The Jordan Harbinger Show.

[00:49:36] Arthur Brooks: Anytime you catch yourself comparing yourself to others, you have to stop and say, "That's what I'm doing. Don't do that." 

[00:49:41] Jordan Harbinger: Oh, god, easier said than done. 

[00:49:43] Arthur Brooks: Yeah, I know, but once you know that the knowledge is power, 

[00:49:46] Jordan Harbinger: I was just at a bachelor party and some of my friends were like, "Oh man, some of our friends, they just became like high school teachers." And I was like, "Well, let me stop you right there. You know, happy those people are? They figured out what they wanted to do when they were like 24. They got married to somebody they'd been dating for a while. They had kids well before age 30. They're satisfied with what they're doing in a lot of ways. They have way more free time than you and I. We can not sit back and we're wired in a way that we're always dissatisfied. They're wired in a way that that is fine." I'm jealous of that on many levels. 

[00:50:16] One in six Americans have actually stopped talking to a family member because of the election. That's pretty scary. 

[00:50:20] Arthur Brooks: It's almost one in five now. Yeah, politics has become super, you know, hyperattenuated in our culture where it's taken on this outsized role and importance to assume ad hominem. This is what you were saying, it's like, "Jordan made this joke on Instagram. And so therefore I know what's residing in the depths of his heart." I bet you, he bears animus towards some racial groups, some wild leap. But that's exactly what we're talking about, motive attribution asymmetry on the basis of ad hominem. Don't be that guy.

[00:50:51] 93 percent of us wish the country were more united, you're part of the problem when you do that. So yeah, I got a win, win, win proposition for our listeners and viewers today. Number one is I'm going to make you more persuasive, I'm going to make you happier, and I'm going to start a social movement in your heart in a tiny little way to bring our country together. And that's answering hatred with love as much as you possibly can. 

[00:51:14] Jordan Harbinger: For a great discussion and how we can bridge the divide in our relationships, our country, and even within our families, check out episode 211 with Arthur Brooks here on The Jordan Harbinger Show. 

[00:51:26] I just love Shawn's research here. It's really interesting to hear that happiness comes before success. I always kind of felt like that may be true, but you never really know. And certainly this is the opposite of what society itself teaches us. And now that Shawn has actually gone out and tested this, it makes perfect sense now that you think about it. Happy people produce better results and are more productive, although sometimes this can be a bit counterintuitive and surprising. 

[00:51:50] Now, it's finally happening where institutions are investing in the happiness of the people that work there, because it affects the bottom line positively, which is great news for everybody who works anywhere for anything I'd say. So thanks so much to Shawn, his books and documentaries of course, link/available in the website on the show notes at jordanharbinger.com. Please use our website links if you buy books from the guests. It does help support the show. Transcripts are in the show notes. I'm at @JordanHarbinger on Twitter and Instagram, or you can connect with me on LinkedIn as well. 

[00:52:19] I'm teaching you how to connect with great people and manage relationships using the same software, systems, and tiny habits that I use every day. That's our Six-Minute Networking course, and the course is free. It's over at jordanharbinger.com/course. I'm teaching you how to dig the well before you get thirsty and build relationships before you need them. It'll change your life at the very least your professional life, but probably also your personal life, jordanharbinger.com/course. 

[00:52:44] This show is created in association with PodcastOne. My team is Jen Harbinger, Jase Sanderson, Robert Fogarty, Millie Ocampo, Ian Baird, Josh Ballard, and Gabriel Mizrahi. Remember, we rise by lifting others. The fee for the show is that you share it with friends when you find something useful or interesting. If you know somebody who's interested in happiness research, or maybe has the equation backwards, share this episode with them. Hopefully, you find something great in every episode of the show. The greatest compliment you can give us is to share the show with those you love. In the meantime, do your best to apply what you hear on the show, so you can live what you listen, and we'll see you next time.